


A Stake of Holly in Her Heart

by ej_writer



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Christmas, Domestic Violence, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Past Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28435290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ej_writer/pseuds/ej_writer
Summary: For their second Christmas in Hawkins, things don’t go over so smoothly for the Hargrove-Mayfields.What should’ve been a day of festive joy passes by somber, silent.It isn’t really until that morning, when they’re all waking up before the sun, ready to celebrate the Yuletide cheer, that the news they’d received last July truly settles over the household.Because on July 4th, at 11:42 p.m, William Reuben Hargrove was pronounced dead.or, how Max spends her first Christmas without her brother in years.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Steve Harrington & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 50
Kudos: 53





	1. December 25, 1985: This First Parting That There Was Among Us

For their second Christmas in Hawkins, things don’t go over so smoothly for the Hargrove-Mayfields. 

What should’ve been a day of festive joy passes by somber, silent. 

It isn’t really until that morning, when they’re all waking up before the sun, ready to celebrate the Yuletide cheer, that the news they’d received last July truly settles over the household. 

Because on July 4th, at 11:42 p.m, William Reuben Hargrove was pronounced dead. 

A lot of things change after that, but not nearly enough. 

Neil Hargrove is still angry all the time, still violent and more than cruel to his family, maybe even a little worse now that he doesn’t have a son to beat up on. 

Susan is still extremely timid, too afraid to step on anyone’s toes to be anything more than a pretty and gentle housewife. Her parenting reflects her fragile nature just the same. 

For Max, their now only child, things just sort of feel, off. Without Billy, the world keeps on turning. 

Her stepdad continues to control every aspect of her life, and her mother still tries to project her dreams of her daughter being the perfect little housewife onto her. It doesn’t help either that her friends seem to pretend that nothing ever happened, and the whole of Hawkins just forgets about Billy, like he had never even roared into that quiet town, or gone out protecting it. 

With the way everyone reacts, it sort of just feels to her like Billy had only stepped out for a little while. Like he was just on that trip he always said he’d take to go visit his mother when he turned 18, and he’d be back for the holidays. 

But he wasn’t, and wouldn’t ever be. 

And somewhere, deep down in her heart, Max knows that. She had been there when he took his last breath, and when they tried and failed to resuscitate him in the ambulance, and when they put him in a coffin and a nice suit he would’ve hated, and put him on display for all the town to gawk at. She was there when they lowered her brother six feet under to a prayer he wouldn't have believed in. 

Billy was truly and entirely gone.

And yet, there was still some part of Max’s mind that hadn’t really been able to process all that had happened. 

Whenever she went into his room, even with his posters and his curtains taken down, his drawers emptied out and his belongings all sent to thrift or to storage, she still expected him to slam the door open and tell her to scram. If her and her friends were to get too loud over the walkies, she would sometimes still wait for him to knock on the wall that divided their bedrooms and shout for her to quiet down. In the mornings when she got ready, it was everything she had not to imagine Billy in the bathroom mirror beside, her hogging the toothpaste and shoving her out of the way of his reflection. 

Always looming in the back of her mind there was this, this nagging, that she’d turn the corner and he’d be there. He was like a ghost in a way. 

But it’s when the holidays come around that this mirrored bubble of denial bursts. 

It wasn’t like Max and Billy had ever particularly gotten along too swell, but they always got their act together for Christmas. 

Susan was very insistent that they have normal holiday traditions so they could be just like a real family, and, though the both of them would always pretend to hate it, it wasn’t the worst thing to be civil and do fun things together for a change. 

This year, while not much has changed about their approach to the Christmas season, they don’t go through their regular traditions to bond or to fit into the stereotype they were supposed to, but rather to try to forget a whole member of the family. It’s all just an attempt at acting like things are normal even now that Billy is dead, and that’s what finally does Max in. 

When they bake the dozens of Christmas cookies like they've done every year since Max was a baby, Billy isn’t there to wipe flour down the back of her shirt or laugh at her when her gingerbread man breaks on the cooling rack. 

Wrapping the tree in lights goes without an argument over who is stuck with untangling them, and not once does she get shoved out of the way when putting up the ornaments because Billy spotted a branch he wanted. Billy’s ornaments, the ones he made out of clay when he was little, stay wrapped up in the box anyways. 

After the local radio stations all start playing nothing but the same annoying songs over and over, Billy isn’t there to blare one of his tapes instead, just to disturb the easy listening. She’s actually pretty sure all his tapes got thrown out not too long ago.

The night before Christmas, when they hang their stockings up on the mantelpiece, Max tries to put Billy’s up too, right between hers and her mother’s, but Neil takes it down and puts it back in the bottom of the box before they’re even done. 

Susan always bought her and the kids sets of matching pjs so their pictures by the tree would look better, and Max couldn’t help but feel a little upset when she saw there were only two sets instead of three, even if Billy would’ve only worn the pants anyways. 

Every Christmas Eve, even before the move, they always used to camp out in Billy’s room. No person under the age of 18 and in their right mind could get a wink of sleep on December the 24th, so for them that usually meant staying up all night just to bicker, Max situated in a pile of blankets and sleeping bags down on Billy’s bedroom floor. Sometimes, when Billy wanted to at least attempt to get some shut eye, he’d tell Max what one of her presents was so she’d be quiet, but it was still fun, and still something she missed dearly. 

In a household like theirs, those moments of not being at each other's throats and behaving like normal kids were extremely important. 

That’s probably why, as she put on her fleece pajamas with ugly reindeer on them and curls up in her step-brother’s bed, this is the first night she truly begins to understand the reality of what she’d known since the night she watched him die.


	2. Hopes, and Joys, and Cares Long, Long Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But telling them that she missed Billy a lot and that she felt guilty celebrating the holiday she knew was secretly his favorite without him around was apparently not the answer they wanted to hear, because Susan drops her camera on the carpet, and Neil leaves the room entirely. 
> 
> She thinks of how the scene’d make the perfect Hargrove-Mayfield family photo.

The next morning is all the harder. 

At 6 in the morning, the time they had agreed upon years ago as their time to wake up on Christmas Day, it’s Susan who gently shakes Max awake, not Billy putting the blaring alarm clock up to his sisters ear.

But Max was already awake, her tears soaking the sheets on her brother's bed, and wishing her mom would just forget to wake her up entirely and leave her there to weep. 

The first “Merry Christmas” she hears is from Neil as he grabs beer out of the fridge, not Billy, who would’ve said it with as much sarcasm as possible as he shoved her out of the way so he could get to his presents first. 

There’s no doubt in Max’s mind that Susan told him to say it, that he didn’t actually have any Christmas spirit in that Scroogey old heart of his to spread wishes of holiday cheer, which only makes the sentiment hurt more. 

And it’s her sitting on the floor all by herself with a flashing camera in her face, tearing wrapping paper off of a bunch of pointless gifts with as little enthusiasm as possible. 

She notices that, compared to previous years, there aren’t a whole lot less presents under the tree, and that only makes her feel worse about opening them without her Billy there to put sticky bows in her hair or toss wrapping paper balls at her. 

By the time she opens half of her presents, including a makeup set she isn’t going to use, a cassette from a pop band she’s never even heard of, and a new pair of chucks she’s probably going to be made fun of for, Max feels her lip start to tremble, and her eyes blur over the multicolored lights on the tree. 

The floodgates really open when, after lowering her camera, the dreaded question comes past her mother’s lips, 

“What’s the matter Maxine, honey?”

That’s all it takes for her to be a bawling mess in the middle of a pile of wrapping paper and presents she doesn’t really want anyways. 

Because there’s so much that is the matter in this particular moment that no answer any shorter than a 30 page thesis could even begin to describe what Max was feeling on that Christmas morning. 

She wants to tell them that she doesn’t want these generic gifts from parents who know nothing about her, that she doesn’t want to be forced into the role of the perfect, cookie cutter family you’d see on a Christmas card, that all she wants is her brother back, but she's choked up, any attempt at speaking drowned out by a sob. 

In this house, authority demands a response, an explanation is due for why their holiday is being ruined by such behavior, so Max has to choke back her sobs and whine out some pathetic excuse. 

She comes up with something like ‘Dustin said he was getting a new Nintendo and I didn’t,’ but nobody really believes that. 

They work it out of her eventually, earning a confession through threats of taking presents away like she was a toddler, and when that doesn’t work, a backhand to the face and a hand in her hair like she was any older than fourteen. 

But telling them that she missed Billy a lot and that she felt guilty celebrating the holiday she knew was secretly his favorite without him around was apparently not the answer they wanted to hear, because Susan drops her camera on the carpet, and Neil leaves the room entirely. 

She thinks of how the scene’d make the perfect Hargrove-Mayfield family photo.

The time between opening gifts and Christmas dinner at 3 o’clock was typically reserved for putting batteries in toys, plugging in new electronics to make sure they worked, and trying on new clothes and shoes, but Max’s meltdown under the tree had been enough to set the whole house on edge. 

In the chair in the living room, where he always seemed to just sit around and scowl with a beer in his hand these days, Neil was that much grumpier, and Max stayed that much further away from him. 

In the kitchen, Susan gets a little clumsier, the sound of her nervous hands clanging pots and pans together reverberating through the eerie quiet that’s come to settle over the house. 

Max decides to go back to her room, to avoid all the noise and tension. She lays on her stomach across her double bed and grabs her walkie from where she left it under her pillow. 

Tuning into the channel she knew would be occupied by her friends, she hears the boys and Eleven, who had come back with the Byers’ to Hawkins for the holidays, already on their own radios, talking a mile a minute about all of their presents. 

That was supposedly a tradition of theirs, calling eachother up to share the news of all they’d gotten, but she hadn’t been able to take part in it last year. She feels sick to her stomach thinking about last Christmas, so she keeps eavesdropping without telling her friends she’s there. 

After so long, the boys all have their turns to gush about their new NES games and records, and in El’s case Barbie dolls and comic books, and the conversation slows down enough that Lucas can ask, “Has anyone heard from MadMax?” 

All around there’s denial, and she hears Lucas sigh and say, “I’m getting kind of worried about her.” 

A buzz of static from Mike's end, “She'll be fine, dude.” 

“Way to be an asshole, Mike.” Dustin cuts in. 

Defensively, Mike says, “What? I just meant that she’s like, super tough.” 

Will tunes in then, the sound of his laugh cutting through the scratchy static, “Aren’t you not supposed to talk like that about other girls in front of your girlfriend.” 

“What do you know about girlfriends?” Mike exclaims, clearly offended from the way his voice breaks.

And from there the conversation keeps on like that, just a couple of teenage boys loudly arguing over things that are not her problem, so she shuts the walkie off. 

But, as she rolls over onto her back, what Mike said is really sticking with her. 

Was she really supposed to be fine? 

She couldn’t wrap her head around how everyone else was able to just keep on like normal while she was stuck mourning the greatest loss she had ever experienced on a day typically reserved for cheerfulness. It didn’t seem fair. 

Staring up at her popcorn ceiling, she lets her thoughts drift back to times when Christmas wasn’t like this. 

Her first Christmas without her dad, she remembers being upset the whole time, his singular gift he sent to her in the mail not really enough to make up for his absence. At the time she was too young to realize it, but Billy had put an express effort into cheering her up that day, letting her pick all of her presents out first, and giving her all the cookies that didn’t get burnt in the oven. 

Now that Billy’s the missing piece, she has no one.

On Christmas Eve a few years back, Neil kicked Billy out of the house, and he had to spend the holiday at a friend’s place. He called Max that morning to tell her that she could open his presents if she wanted to, and to be careful around Neil. She understood that Billy was looking out for her when she saw her stepfather smack her mother for the first time under the mistletoe. 

Last Christmas, her and Billy weren’t really on speaking terms, and just the thought of the way things were between them filled her heart with so much remorse. She thought she had all the time in the world to be angry with her brother, never in a million years would she have thought that Christmas of ‘84 would be his last.

In retrospect, knowing now that just months after the fact Billy would be gone, there was so, so much she wished she would have done differently.

Because he’d been trying to make up for it, had made his attempt at earning her forgiveness, and she’d rejected every last one. She thought he deserved it then, but she would give anything to be able to go back in time and accept his ride to the snowball, to drink the hot chocolate he made her instead of letting it sit until it got cold, to take new Christmas photos where she didn’t have a scowl on her face every time she was near Billy. 

Before she can dig herself too far into her grave of despair, she’s interrupted by the dull tone of the ringing phone. 

Without anybody even telling her to answer it, she knows it’s her Aunt Nicole, who always called her on Christmas like she was still a little girl because she wanted to hear what all Max got this year. 

She sighs and wipes away any lingering tears from her face, dragging herself off the bed and trudging across the room as slowly and loudly as possible, just in case there was any question as to how exactly she felt about forced family bonding. 

The phone she used to keep on her dresser had since been thrown out the window as punishment for calling Lucas, so she has to go out to the kitchen to answer it. 

Right now, listening to the shrieking and dehumanizingly pitiful voice of aunt Nicole was the very last thing she wanted to do, but Susan sends her a stern look from where she’s stood at the stove that tells her she has to. 

“Hiya Maxie!” Every year she underestimated how loud her aunt was, and always had to pull the receiver back away from her ear. “How are ya?” 

“I’m alright Aunt Nicky.” It had seemed like the right thing to say, nobody wanted to hear about her being all depressing anyways, but she regrets it the moment Nicole’s response comes. 

“Oh, that’s great honey! You know, I would’ve expected you to be all mopey over Neil’s boy.” She chuckles at her own words, though through the static of long distance it sounds more like a cackle, and continues on, “Lord knows how emotional you get over such silly little things.” 

Then, as though she hadn’t just doubly insulted her niece, she asks, “Anywho, did ya get anything good this year? Maxie?” 

But Max doesn't even hear the question. She drops the receiver and walks away, entirely unable to stomach what Nicole said. 

The phone is left dangling from its cord for her mother to pick up, as she blinks away the bitter sting of tears and marches straight through the living room. 

But before she can escape back to her bedroom, Neil catches her wrist on the way through, his grip tight enough that she can feel her bones grinding together as he holds her there. 

She hears Susan in the next room frantically trying to explain the situation to her sister, making up a more respectable excuse about boyfriend drama, which would’ve made Max pretty upset if the very angry step-father trapping her in the living room wasn't the greatest of her worries. 

Once her mother is off the phone, Max gets herself a good old fashioned talking to, the same ‘respect and responsibility’ speech she’d heard a thousand times before, accented with a twist to the wrist if she doesn’t answer quickly enough or assuredly enough, or forgot to add the ‘yes sir’ onto the end. 

After he’s confirmed it a good five times that Max fully understands the consequences of disrespecting her family, he squeezes harder until her wrist pops and her fingers go numb. Susan must decide that’s enough, because she asks for Neil’s help with something in the kitchen. 

Without looking back once to see the scene she was leaving behind, Max seizes the opportunity to escape back to her bedroom, though she can feel Neil’s eyes burning a hole in her back as he watches her scurry away. 

It’s with shaky hands that she locks the door behind herself, and she sits down with her back against it. She flexes her fingers to make sure they still work, and moves her wrist around so she’ll know if it’s broken, coming to the conclusion that, other than the dark red fingerprints blemishing her pale skin, she’ll be alright. 

There’s a battery operated radio on her nightstand that she turns on to try to drown out the sound of the developing screaming match in the living room, since the topic of argument is her, but the irony of every song telling of love and joy and peace on earth is too much, and she shuts it off. 

She sheds a few tears for her childhood, for nostalgia of simpler Christmases as it fades away to the sound of her fighting parents, and for the ache pulsing in her wrist and other silly little things, but most of all, she cries for her brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray for Chapter two! Thank y’all for all your lovely comments! Sorry for any emotional damage this has causes!!


	3. The Even-Handed Dealing of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows she should probably bite her tongue, but half a year of being good, of letting her parents say whatever they pleased to her and still acting all sweet and polite starts to add up, and something about her mother’s choice of words really strikes a nerve. 
> 
> She thinks Billy would be proud of her for choosing to fight back.

Without warning, a shrill buzz of static cuts into the silence of the room and sends a sharp pain through Max’s head, which is already hurting from crying all day and not eating anything. 

She hears a fist hit the wall in the living room, and Neil’s voice echoes down the hall. “Turn that thing off, damn it!” 

If she didn’t know any better, she’d tell him to screw off and leave her alone to wallow in peace, but she does, so she snatches up the walkie and turns the volume as far down as it goes, whispering into it in a voice that sounds wet and pathetic, “Hello?” 

“MadMax!” It’s Dustin, and Max sucks in a breath of air through her teeth at how loud he is, focusing on listening for signs that she’s been caught. She holds her breath and listens for the sound of Neil’s leather recliner creaking, or the sound of boot-clad footfalls outside of her door. 

“We've been trying to get you on the walkie all. day. Where have you been?” There’s a moment of silence while he waits for an answer, but Max isn’t ready to give one, isn’t sure she’s in the clear yet to do so without getting in trouble. “Max, Hellooo?” 

“Sorry, I was just, busy, I guess.” She saw no reason to burden him with the truth. He wouldn’t understand anyways. 

“Whatever you were doing can wait, this is more important.” There was no way he could understand the implications of what he said from her point of view, but it hurts her all the same. “We’re all going to a Christmas party at the Wheelers’, and we’re probably gonna start a new campaign!“

Sounding apologetic, she says, “You know, I really don’t think I can come, Dustin.” 

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.” For the first time in a long time, she hears his tone shift to serious. “We all miss you, MadMax.” 

She’d be lying if she said a party with her friends was something she wasn’t interested in, so it’s enough, his thinly veiled attempt at getting her there, to convince her. “Whatever, I have to ask my parents first. I’ll tell you when I have an answer.” 

Now, Max isn’t really expecting to ever be able to call Dustin back with good news, her parents hardly ever let her out of the house these days, and when they could help it they cut off her means of communication. They say it's for her safety, isolating her and treating her like a prisoner, but that excuse stops being believable after they use it so many times. 

But if it's normally unlikely that she’s allowed to go out, now that she was causing a rift, and on Christmas Day, of all days? There was no way they’d say yes. 

The punishment for sneaking out would be way worse than what would happen if they just said no, so, if it means not getting the treatment Billy had received last time she’d left through her bedroom window, she’s willing to consider just asking. 

Besides, Neil and Susan never technically said she was grounded, so it’s not really a surefire rejection at this point. Shame that the red and purple and yellow marks blooming across her skin make her so nervous about asking. 

She wishes someone would have given her a heads up sooner so she could’ve made her chances better by asking days in advance and being on her best behavior, but she realizes that not everyone has Neil Hargrove as a parent, and might not understand the importance of a simple warning. 

Regardless, it's worth a shot if it means getting away from this place.

Firm in her decision, Max exits her room, tiptoeing down the hall to find her mother busy in the kitchen again. “Mom?” 

Jumping nearly out of her skin, Susan puts a hand to her chest and lets out a breathy chuckle. “Oh honey, you scared me.” 

Without thinking too much about it, her mind racing a million miles a minute with nervous energy, Max goes ahead and just gets it over with, asking her mother, “Can I go to the Wheelers for a Christmas party? Just for a little bit.” 

The way that the practiced smile drops right off of her mothers face, immediately in its stead a stern frown, is enough for her heart to stop. A simple no would have sufficed, and she’d to go back up to her room to pout for the rest of the night, but that face, the downright scary expression Susan wore when she was upset with Max always meant she was in for it. 

“Maxine. It is Christmas, you should really be with your family.” Susan turns back to the stove, stirring something around in the hot dish before chastising her daughter, “Those kids are a bad influence on you.” 

She knows she probably should bite her tongue, but half a year of being good, of letting her parents say whatever they pleased to her and still acting all sweet and polite starts to add up, and something about her mother’s choice of words really strikes a nerve. 

She thinks Billy would be proud of her for choosing to fight back. 

“My family?” Her voice comes out exasperated, already worn out from sobbing and uneven with the anger she’s feeling towards her mother. “How am I supposed to do that when my brother is dead?”

Her mother sighs and stops what she’s doing, but doesn’t turn around to look at her daughter as she says, “That just means you should be all the more thankful for what you do have.” 

“Oh, right, like I have sooo much.” She rolls her eyes for emphasis, though internally she isn’t nearly as careless as the gesture might suggest. 

Pushing buttons isn’t something one does lightly in this household, so it’s not without worry that Max keeps talking back to Susan. The total combination of today’s events was enough that her fuse was already burnt up, her patience spent until there was nothing left, and so she pushes aside that fear, and refuses to keep her mouth shut a second longer.

Any challenge to authority comes with its attempt at drawing the rebel back in, and this time is no exception. Susan, who was now busying herself with the roaster, reprimands her daughter, “Do not talk to your mother that way, Maxine!” 

But Max is starting to see the pattern, and she’s getting tired of this same old song and dance, arguing with her parents about her being a disappointing child while they think they’re the perfect parents. It’s repetitive, it’s exhausting, and it’s only pushing their daughter further away. 

So she refuses to take the bait, asks, “Why? Because it’s true?” 

“Because we’re your family! And we love you very much.” Susan is reaching her breaking point, judging from how her voice keeps getting higher, and her movements more aggressive. 

Wincing when her mother slams a plate down on the counter on purpose, Max crosses her arms over her chest and rolls her eyes. She doesn’t let the passive aggressiveness of Susan’s cooking deter her, and says, somewhat under her breath “When it’s convenient.” 

Because she can’t help but think of the way that everything with them was so performative. They’d smile and fake it as long as everyone else thought they were a happy little family, and suddenly it didn’t matter what went on behind closed doors. 

There was no such thing as love in that house. Not since the day they’d buried their son with fake tears in their eyes, turning on the waterworks for the funeral patrons only to come straight home and gut the house of all his possessions, his memories, and definitely not since they’d started treating Max like an animal in a cage, only there to bend to their every whim and to fuel their domestic fantasy. 

Susan would never see it that way. Afterall, mother knows best. 

“You are being very disrespectful, Maxine.” Her tone is shrill, worn out with frustration with her daughter for not just taking what’s being dished out like she’s supposed to, but she’s just as determined to show that she’s in control as Max is to show that she isn’t. “Behaving like a child is no way to get what you want.”

“I’m just telling the truth!” Raising her voice at her mother is simultaneously one of the most liberating and terrifying experience of Max’s life. 

Slamming a wooden spoon back down into the pot of noodles, Susan turns back to Max, tossing her hands up in the air and exclaiming, “What has gotten into you?” 

There's a biting comeback already on the tip of her tongue, but before she can say it, Neil’s slurring voice interrupts from the doorway, “I think we should let ‘er go.” 

He’s already drunk despite it being just before noon, not that that’s anything new or unexpected. Since July, he'd more than doubled the number of beers he drank in a day, the stale smell of Schlitz followed him everywhere these days. 

“She wants to be away from her loving parents so bad on this fine Christmas morning, then let her.” He says it likes its perfect logic, in that smug way he always uses to prove he’s the smartest person in the room. 

Susan steps closer to her husband, worrying the lace on her apron between her fingers. “Neil, we can’t reward this type of behavior.” 

With a cold smile, he looks right into Max’s eyes, though she drops her gaze to the floor as soon as they make eye contact, and says, “I think she’s old enough to know when she is and isn’t wanted around.” 

Max isn’t dumb, she knows just from the look on his face that he’s hoping for failure. He wants her to get her feelings hurt while she’s at the Wheelers and come crying back to her parents, seeking solace. 

And it is true that she has been considering whether or not she even wants to go to the party. 

It’s practically guaranteed that her friends are going to be nosy, asking uncomfortable questions they shouldn’t and saying things that were supposed to make her feel better, but would just sound flat out mean, and that isn’t particularly how she wants to spend her Christmas. 

But the alternative happens to be much, much worse, so it becomes a matter of which people are going to be easier for her to deal with, and her friends take the cake on that one no doubt. Besides, even knowing that it might not go perfectly, she still misses her friends as much as they seem to miss her. 

Susan and Neil really overestimate how gullible she is anymore. 

Being told she is unwanted isn’t exactly the best way to get permission for something, but she’s willing to take what she can get if it means she doesn’t have to deal with this anymore. 

Before they can talk about it anymore and change their minds, Max darts back to her room to get ready. 

Christmas Day was typically the only day of the year that she was allowed to wear her pjs past eight in the morning, and normally she wouldn’t dream of putting on a pair of jeans if she didn’t have to, but right now, there were more important things than warm fleece pajamas. 

While she’s getting dressed, she realizes that, unless she can be forgiven for her outburst and get Neil or Susan to take her, she doesn’t have a way to get to the party. Well, technically she sort of has a way, but not only would her parents kill her if they found out she drove illegally by herself, the means to the end was still holed up at the repair shop halfway across town, so that wasn’t going to happen.

She tries to get Dustin back on the line, but the only answer comes from El, who relays the message that Dustin has sent his usual chauffeur, the boy with the goofy hair (she still struggles with learning names every now and again), to her house to pick her up. 

In Max’s own opinion, sending a random older boy to her house without being absolutely positive that she had express permission to go to that party was grounds for murder, but she supposes she’ll spare Dustin on the grounds that he was probably just as clueless about Neil’s abuse as she used to be when she first came around, before it’d been turned around on her and Susan. 

She still wanted to ring his neck because, as good intended as her friends were, they seemed to have a real knack for making things so much worse than they already were. 

The tension from the fight in the kitchen is still making her nervous, and sitting around in her room biting the corners of her nails and bouncing her knee up and down while she waits does nothing to help it, so she decides to go wait on the stoop instead. 

Before she makes it out the front door, Neil calls after her, “Make yourself useful and grab the mail on your way out, brat.” 

At the curb, the mailbox is jammed full of envelopes, a hoard of last minute Christmas cards from various family members scattered throughout the U.S. 

Merry Christmas from great aunts, grandpas, and cousins in Tennessee and California, Arizona and Mississippi. But there’s one red envelope at the bottom of the stack that she can’t tell who it’s from. 

It has no sender information besides a home address she doesn’t recognize, but it does happen to be addressed to none other than Billy R. Hargrove, 5280 Cherry Lane.

Careful not to rip it, Max opens the envelope and slides out of it a card. It’s sort of plain looking on the outside, the kind of Christmas card you would buy from the Hallmark store when you weren’t sure what somebody would like, but there is absolutely nothing generic about it once she opens it. 

Because written under the printed message on the inside of the card, in a handwriting painfully familiar to her, there’s a note that reads “Merry Christmas B! Hope it’s a good one! - heart, mom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is sort of late, I didn’t have much time to work on it because of New Years, and before I knew it I only got one hour of sleep! Hope you liked it!


	4. In Want of Common Comforts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The walk down the sidewalk to Steve Harrington's BMW waiting for her at the curb feels very much like a walk of shame. 
> 
> Maria’s card burning a hole in her pocket, Max tries to focus on the crunch of ice melt under her boots, the wind whipping the branches of the bare ginkgo trees at the edge of their property, anything at all that might take her mind off the lump in her throat.

Max reads the message written in the Christmas card over and over until her eyes are crossing, then does it some more. 

She’s so caught up on that last part, the signature, “mom.” Her mind just can’t process what she’s reading. 

Maria Hargrove was Billy’s mother, a woman who Max had never had the pleasure, or displeasure, depending on who you asked, of meeting, being that she was out of the picture years before Max got involved. 

According to her ex husband, she was conceited, selfish, sleazy. Ask her son, and he’d say she was quiet, nervous, loving.

Rumor has it that she just up and disappeared one day, leaving everything behind but a packed suitcase and a stolen debit card. Everything including her ten year old son. 

Max had never really gotten the full story, only bits and pieces of the truth, but up to this moment she’d been perfectly content with the explanation that she’d gotten too worn out by Neil’s abuse, and cut out everything that had to do with that life they shared. 

The card in her hand and the note inside of it might suggest otherwise. 

The retelling of events from the abuser abandoned by his victim and the scorned and forgotten child was something that Max always knew would never be the most accurate, and so she knows her perception of the situation might be wrong, but there was still something that was throwing her off. 

For one thing, why would a mother who had deliberately left without her son just write to him like nothing was wrong? She supposes that Billy tried to keep guarded a lot of his personal life, and maybe this wasn’t quite as out of the blue as she thought. 

But what bothers her more is that the message seems far too simple, too casual to be addressed to a dead boy. Maybe it is surprising for Maria to have sent anything in the first place, but for it to include such a normal interaction? There’s something there that’s rubbing Max the wrong way.

Thinking back, she realizes she can’t actually remember anybody ever mentioning that they’d called Billy’s mother to break the news, and she knows for a fact that she hadn't seen her face, the one immortalized in the photo of her that Billy always kept in his glove box, anywhere among the few guests that had shown up at his funeral. And then she figures it out; 

Maria Hargrove doesn’t know her son is dead. 

Max’s knees start to shake, so she lowers herself to sit on the stoop. Words can’t come close to describing how she’s feeling, holding in her hands that handwritten sentiment from an isolated mother to her dead son. Not even the tears that run down her cheeks and are dried by the winter wind can express the grief that that little Christmas card triggers in her heavy heart.

Just knowing that there’s someone out there that might care as much about Billy as she does is such a profound thought in her mind. But is it really the same? 

Is there any comparison even able to be drawn between the grieving sister of a misunderstood brother, and the woman who’d knowingly left her child with a monster? 

Max’s knee jerk reaction is to say no, that any person who would knowingly abandon another who needed them deserves in no way to be affiliated with her and her heartache, but deep down she knows that isn’t completely true. 

Even she’s considered it, running away from Neil and Susan and Hawkins and never looking back, but she’s trapped, by school, by her friends, by a cemetery plot. For Maria to actually go through with it, that must’ve been the hardest decision of her life. 

And besides, Billy would had to have already forgiven her if he gave her the Cherry address. There’s no way she would’ve gotten it on her own, they hadn’t even told anybody where they were going before they moved. 

The whole thing was a lot more complicated than she’d ever expected. 

She doesn’t know how long she sits there contemplating it, bright red tear streaks on her freckled cheeks, before her ride eventually shows up, and Max realizes that now more than ever, the last thing she wants is to go to some party. 

Not even the idea of being around her loving friends seemed like too attractive an alternative right now, not since she’d stumbled across Billy’s Christmas card, but the way she saw it, she didn’t have a choice. 

Bailing now meant she’d have to go back inside and face her parents after she’d already made them angry today, which would do nothing but prove Neil right. She could already imagine the smug look on his stupid drunken face, and so, despite her resignations, she stands to make her way towards the car. 

Carefully, she slides the card back into its envelope and puts it into her jacket pocket, or rather the pocket of Billy’s jacket that she saved from being thrown out when they cleaned out his room. 

Up until now, she’d been telling herself she only wore it because it was warm, but today she'd done enough reflecting to be able to admit that, more than any other excuse she might make for the sake of appearances, she just missed her brother. 

The walk down the sidewalk to Steve Harrington's BMW waiting for her at the curb feels very much like a walk of shame. 

Maria’s card burning a hole in her pocket, Max tries to focus on the crunch of ice melt under her boots, the wind whipping the branches of the bare ginkgo trees at the edge of their property, anything at all that might take her mind off the lump in her throat. 

When she yanks the door open, she knows it’s a little too hard for an expensive car that isn’t hers, but she slumps down into the passenger seat anyways.

Steve makes a face, she assumes because he’s going to call her on not going for the backseat when they’re supposed to be picking up Dustin too, but then he just keeps staring at her. 

Max scowls, “Are you going to take me to the party or what?” 

He clears his throat and looks away. “Yeah I just, uh, wanted to ask, you know, if-if you were okay.” 

“What do you think?” She spits. 

Even though she’s pretty sure he wasn’t asking about the abuse, only curious as to how she’s coping with her brother's death rather than how she’s holding up against Neil’s temper, she tugs her sleeve down anyways, just in case he saw the bruises. 

Of course Steve catches it, his eyes flickering down to the denim cuffs pulled over her hands and softening to show something like pity, before he says, “Sorry, I wasn’t-“

But Max doesn’t want his pity, so she shuts him down, clear exhaustion in her tear-thick voice, “Please, just drive.” 

Most people would be happy to know there was someone in their corner, but the longer she’s alone in that house, the more others' empathy has come to make her feel smothered. 

Because a thousand empty “sorry”s and condolences without feeling wouldn’t change a thing, wouldn’t make the bruises and the man who put them there go away or bring her brother back, they only piled up expectations on her to get better for their sake, so they didn’t have to watch her be all depressing anymore. 

For that reason, it felt sort of insulting to her to have others showering her in pointless pity. 

“Right, yeah, of course.” He says, but his gaze lingers again on Max’s face for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing in thought as he turns away to start the car. 

She rolls her eyes and leans back in her seat, hoping to show him that now is just really not the time for a therapy session from her babysitter. 

Max’s subconscious must have disagreed, or maybe the concern on Steve’s face just seemed genuine enough that she buys it, because she feels the tears coming again. 

It’s something that feels so incredibly shameful, to turn her head and stare out the window so Steve Harrington can’t see her crying, to even be crying again for what felt like the hundredth time today, but she just can’t stop herself. 

She tries to cheer herself up by remembering that she is currently on her way to her friend's house, and that she would soon be celebrating and having fun with the people who care about her, because Christmas is not supposed to feel like this. 

But knowing that when all of it was over, Billy won’t be the one there to pick her up in his Camaro, and that she’ll be dropped off back at a home where she isn’t safe, and where they’ll pretend her brother never even existed, the joy of the holiday is drained away entirely. 

Her shoulders shake as she stifles her sobs, and there’s no hiding the few sniffles and gasps she can’t hold back. It’s humiliating, especially because she can feel Steve glancing over at her every now and again. 

Were she not sure that the moment she opens her mouth she’s going to start ugly sobbing and betray her barely there dignity, she would’ve told him to mind his own. Instead, she just keeps her mouth shut and stares out the window, hoping he’ll leave her alone. 

They’re a few minutes away from Dustin’s house when Steve sighs and suddenly makes a dead stop, pulling over against the curb. She looks over at him, and notices his eyes shining in a way that was probably not because of the heater being turned up too high. 

“What are you doing?” 

He lets his hands drop from the wheel, and turns in his seat to look at Max. “Do you even want to go to this party?”

She doesn’t really know how exactly she’s supposed to answer that. There isn’t time to explain the nuanced version, the internal debate she’s holding between friends or family, invasions of her privacy or a slap to the face, so she settles on, “I don’t know.” 

“Then let’s ditch. My friends and I used to go down to Benny’s on Christmas for the pie, we should go.” Steve says, his voice wavering, just a little.

The implication of skipping out on the party to go out with a boy her brothers age, alone, mind you, when he’d already been accused once of being sweet on her, (the assumption was baseless and came from a panicking and very confused Billy, but still) is enough to make Max’s heart drop into her stomach with dread. 

There must be a look on her face to match that feeling in her chest, because he specifies, “I promise it’s not weird or anything I just- you shouldn't have to be around all that right now.”

But she’s on the defensive now, and she crosses her arms and says, in her meanest tone of voice she can muster, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you and I both know they’re going to be nosy.” Judging from the concentration on his face, he knows he has to earn her trust back, and calculates his next words very carefully. “Wouldn’t want them asking any questions about your arm.” 

In a way, that only does the opposite by making him seem suspicious, but her interest is piqued. He knows something, and he wants to talk about it without drawing the attention of everyone that’ll be at the Wheeler’s. That doesn’t automatically equal him being a creep, right? 

Not when she’s got so much that she doesn’t want them to know either. 

Turning it over in her head, she makes the decision that she's got enough that she doesn’t have to bolt, but she’ll still be wary. She's well aware that she has a problem with being too trusting, for years she’d thought Neil wasn’t that bad of a person, but she’s pretty sure Steve’s a little more open about his baggage, and her judge of character isn’t that bad once she gets familiar with somebody. 

So she agrees in her own way, looking over to Steve and asking him, “What about Dustin?” 

“He’ll be fine, dude. He’s like, super tough.” Steve mocks Mikes tone from when Mike had said the same thing earlier, having overheard through his own walkie that he always left on in case of emergency and putting lots of effort into his stupid teenage boy impression. 

For the first time that morning she feels something other than the sting of despair, a small bubble of laughter from her throat and a smile finding its way onto her face as she mumbles, “Whatever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoopee! Another chapter down! Y’all are all so sweet, thank you bunches for continuing to read this!!


	5. Hospitality, Merriment, and Open-Heartedness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benny’s is nothing special, Max thinks as they pull up into the parking lot, which is nothing but a slab of concrete without any lines painted on it. 
> 
> From the outside, it looks like a dingy old diner with about the same charm as the middle school cafeteria. On the inside, well, it’s just a dingy old diner with the same charm as a school cafeteria, with its greasy tiled floors and stained up old walls painted a sickening baby blue.

Benny’s is nothing special, Max thinks as they pull up into the mostly empty parking lot, which is nothing but a slab of concrete without any lines painted on it. 

From the outside, it looks like a dingy old diner with about the same charm as the middle school cafeteria. On the inside, well, it’s just a dingy old diner with the same charm as a school cafeteria, with its greasy tiled floors and stained up old walls painted a sickening baby blue. 

It’s about as full as you’d expect a place like that to be on Christmas Day, as in, other than a handful of elderly customers on the stools at the counter, they are completely alone. 

They sit down at a cracking booth by the window, which Max notes was probably last cleaned before she was even born, and an older woman approaches them with a menu. 

Steve must know her, chats up a storm about the daily special and school, about life in general and the old owner of the place before ordering for the both of them, and all the while Max just sits back and watches. 

Even after the waitress comes back with a pot of coffee, and the two slices of pie Steve promised, she stays leaning back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest, watching.

There’s a tension burning under her skin, and she wants nothing to do with the pleasantries. If they were here to talk, then talk they would. 

Steve goes to say something between bites of sugar cream pie, an Indiana specialty apparently, but Max cuts him off, her tone harsh. “Why did you bring me here?” 

He looks confused, looking up as her with a stupid look on his face. “We’re avoiding the Christmas party?” 

“Oh, sure, so you’re totally not trying to lay your claim now that my brother’s not here to stop you, right?” That might’ve been a little mean, but she doesn’t really know what to think right now. 

He takes her to a remote location on the very edge of town when she’s supposed to be with a crowd of people because, what did he say, he didn’t want her to deal with them right now? She thinks she has the right to be concerned.

“I-No, I’m not.” Steve sits up straight in his seat. “I just wanted to talk to you.” 

She nods over-exaggeratedly. “Is that before or after you make your move?” 

There’s a certain pleading tone in his voice, one that obviously means he doesn’t want Max to think poorly of him, as he says, “Max, really I’m not trying to be a weirdo, I just figured you’d want to talk about Billy.” 

She would be lying if she said hearing his name doesn’t take the air right out of her lungs. If just for a moment, she’s frozen. 

Because nobody actually says Billy’s name anymore, just things like ‘your step brother’ or ‘Neil’s boy’. Sometimes Hargrove, and maybe even William once or twice, but never Billy. 

It takes some effort for her to muster up the will to keep arguing after that, but Max has a retort at the ready, once she evens her breaths and moves past the initial shock. “What’s there to talk about? Everyone’s already forgotten about him anyways.” 

“I haven’t.” Steve looks her dead in the eye, the most serious she’s ever seen him outside of a life threatening situation. “Don’t think I ever will.” 

She scoffs, “Yeah, well, negative sentiments don’t count for much either.” 

Everyone knows things were a little rocky between Billy and Steve, so she’s expecting him to rub it in her face that her brother was a bad person who beat people up for fun, or whatever the general opinion of those who didn’t know him was.

But Steve shocks her again by saying, “I never said that.” 

And it's so beyond frustrating, talking in circles with Steve, that Max decides to cut her losses. Bites her tongue and sinks further back in the pleather booth, casting her eyes down to show him that she’s done with this. 

If she would’ve known he’d be this annoying, she would’ve just made him take her to the Wheeler’s and leave her alone for the rest of her life. 

But he doesn’t get the message, though shes not sure if he’s even smart enough to, because he keeps talking. “Me and Billy, we didn’t- we were friends, in the end.” 

“You probably don’t want to hear it from me, but we all, you know, like, feel pretty shitty after a, um, a personal loss like this.” The words come out slow as he tries to think of the best thing to say, and it’s her instinct to cut him off, but Max listens. 

“E-Especially when it’s someone we care about so much.” There’s a focused sort of look on his face, like he’s trying to get Max to understand that there’s some reason behind what all he’s saying. “Just, what I’m trying to get at is that, I think I understand that in a way probably no one else in your life does.” 

That sentence is what finally makes it click into place for Max, the reason why Steve won’t just get on with it and say what he means, the reason she’s even here in the first place. 

Because Steve lost Billy too. 

She realizes that they must have had a thing. The kind that was kept secret, unknown by anyone but maybe a select few for their safety. A thing not much at all unlike what she and Lucas have. 

Of course she knew about Billy, about the ex-boyfriends in Cali and the fake girlfriend he acquired last spring around the same time a paternal rage-induced scar appeared in his eyebrow, but she never would’ve guessed that he he had someone, and especially not for that someone to be Steve Harrington. 

The realization hits her like a freight train. A snotty, teary-eyed freight train. 

Just knowing that he hadn’t been able to show up at Billy’s funeral, or grieve in public the loss that to him must have been earth-shattering, and that he even had to tell her in vague secrets about his relationship to her brother, her heart hurts incredibly for Steve, and she sheds a few silent tears for him

But then there’s this other feeling, this creeping warmth of something like relief deep inside Max. To know she wasn’t alone in her misery or her heartbreak, she feels seen for the very first time since they’d put Billy in the back of that ambulance. 

All in one morning, she’d gone from feeling so iced out by her grief, the singular embodiment of mourning being orbited by the ignorant, the selfish, the cruel, and now there were at least two other people out there in the world who could share that pain with her. 

Maybe Christmas wasn’t such a humbug after all. 

To say that Max doesn’t know what to say now would be the understatement of the century. She’s totally floored, her mind still slowly trying to recuperate from the weight of what Steve just confessed to her. 

Eventually she’s able to get her thoughts in order enough to ask, “How long were you guys, like, cool for?” 

“He apologized in December.” Looking down into his mug, he takes a sip of coffee, reminding Max that hers is getting cold. “Two months later we were friends.” 

She knows what that really means, that ‘friends’ meant he and Billy had started dating in February, and suddenly a couple of things start to come together.

Like the time when Billy had taken her into the city with promises of a shopping spree, but only bought a couple of little gifts and a bouquet of fancy roses that she never saw again. And the days when she’d wake up for school and he’d be missing because he spent the night somewhere without telling anybody, so Susan would have to drive her. Or when she would find him with things too expensive for his pool wages, like a new pair of ray bans, obvious gifts from the secret admirer. 

It’s bittersweet, knowing it Steve was behind all of that. 

Despite the tears welling up in her eyes, Max decides to try to crack a joke. “Does this mean you’re my brother in law now?”

Steve returns it by shrugging and saying, “I guess it does, shitbird.” 

There is a moment where Max allows herself to laugh with Steve, her quiet giggle echoing in their empty little corner of the diner, but in her heart, she feels a pang of guilt when she looks to the booth in front of her, and thinks about how Billy should be there with them too, with his own slice of pie and a whole life ahead of him. 

So Max sniffles, a gentle tear sliding down her cheek when she blinks, and says, “I’m sorry.” 

Steve sighs heavily, and sets his cup down. “You don’t have a thing to be sorry for, Max.” 

The tears make her voice wobbly, and it hardly comes out as she asks, “Don’t you miss him?” 

“‘Course I do. All the time.” Steve says softly. 

“Then I’m sorry.” Her bottom lip quivers, and she bites it to try to hold back the sob that comes after. 

She can be grateful that Benny’s isn’t a very popular hangout spot these days, so that the only ones around to hear her crying are a couple of geezers whose hearing is probably too poor to notice anyways and Steve. 

“Hey, don’t,” Steve starts to say, but his voice cracks, and there’s tears streaking his cheeks to match those on Max’s. 

It’s probably good for them, crying it out over pie and coffee, and there’s something about the whole thing that just feels so right to Max, being able to talk with somebody who’s felt exactly what she’s been going through for these five grueling months of isolation. 

To her, it feels like this is just where Billy would want her to be. 

Eventually they get it out of their systems, crying until there are no tears left, and with a final dab at their eyes with wadded up printed napkins, they’re good to keep going. 

Max is the first to strike the conversation back up, having noticed something particularly familiar about Steve’s denim vest. She has a sneaking suspicion it’s not too much unlike the jacket she’s wearing, in that both articles had at one point belonged to her brother. 

She nods her head towards him. “Is that Billy’s?” 

“What?” Steve looks down at himself like he’s completely forgotten what he’s wearing. “Oh, yeah. He forgot it at my place ages ago.”

She smiles to herself and says, “He did that a lot, forgot things.” 

“Really?” 

“Mhm.” She nods assuredly and explains, “One time, he forgot to pick me up from school, and I didn’t have a bus pass so he had to drive all the way back and get me.” 

“Sounds about like Billy.” There’s a warm smile spreading across Steve’s tear-stained face and an equally as warm chuckle. “You know I brought him here last year?” 

Max raises an eyebrow and sips her coffee, but doesn’t say anything back. Steve continues in her place. “It was the night of the snowball, and, I’m sure you remember, his face was super messed up.”

“He wanted to talk, I told him we should come here, so we wouldn’t have to sit in his car.” Steve’s sort of staring off into space, absentmindedly tapping his fingers on the tabletop. “We sat at this booth, and that was when he apologized.”

He looks back at Max now to say, “He told me about you too. How last Christmas was different because he didn’t know how to make it up to you.” 

“He really loved you, Max.” His voice is thick, like he might start crying again.

Hers is barely above a whisper as she returns the sentiment. “I’m not the only one.” 

For the rest of the night until closing, they spent their time exchanging stories of their memories with Billy, of times when he’d made them happy that they felt inclined to share. 

They talked about how clumsy he could be, how weird his sense of humor was, his favorite off the wall music, anything and everything that comes to mind that encapsulated the Billy they knew.

One thing they don’t feel the need bring up is abusive parents or accidents at the mall, because that’s not the Billy they want to remember him by. They just talk and talk until they felt as close to one another as they had been to her brother, to his lover.

Just before 10, being that they’re the only stragglers left and Benny’s is about to close, the woman from before who’d taken their orders shoos them out with her politest smile. 

From behind the counter, she had watched very moment of their emotional exchange, and some of the cheer in her own heart had been awakened, so she sent them away with some more baked goods before closing up. 

Steve takes the long way back to old Cherry Road, trying to stretch this out for as long as he can. They didn’t much talk about it, sure, but his knowledge of how things were in the Hargrove-Mayfield house was enough that he knows he doesn’t want to send Max back there, not yet. 

There’s a comfortable silence settled over them in the front seat, no sound but tires on wet pavement and faint Christmas carols drifting quietly through the radio. 

Everything they could’ve possibly needed or wanted to say had already been aired out at Benny’s, minus some of the less than subtle stories they didn’t think they should share, so they both just take the time to appreciate the peace. 

He’s able to get Max another forty five minutes away from home, letting her settle down in her seat with the heat as high as it can go, taking her drearily down scenic routes and back alley ways, but he can’t delay it forever. 

He wishes he could, that didn’t have to take her back there at all, but rather give her the same chance for her freedom from that house that he’d pleaded so desperately with Billy to take before it was too late, but that was a discussion he knew very well she wasn’t ready for. 

They pull up outside of the house to see the lights still on, and Max gives him a weak smile before stepping out onto the sidewalk. 

She shuts the door behind herself, but she doesn’t budge, doesn’t take any further steps to leave, and Steve doesn’t either. 

Rolling down the bimmers window, Steve leans across the seat and says to her, “Listen, if you ever need anything at all just, please let me know. We can do this again anytime.” 

She nods and stuffs her hands in her pockets, a look on her face like she’s deep in thought. Steve takes that as his cue that it’s time to leave. 

One last smile, a “Merry Christmas, Max,” and he’s pulling away, leaving her to stand alone in the icy breeze. 

Making sure he’s well and gone, the sight of his taillights no longer visible from where she's standing, Max takes the envelope that contains Maria’s card out of her pocket, rubbing her thumb over the back of the smooth red paper.

She doesn’t know why she kept it a secret. Of all people, Steve deserves to know, but she figures this is something she’s got to work through on her own. 

The front door creaks open behind her, and Susan, dressed in a robe and with her hair up in curlers, calls her inside with scorn in her voice for being out so late. 

But not even that can deflate the growing feeling in her chest, of camaraderie, of belonging, of having a friend worth more to her than her mothers bitterness could ever take away. 

No, Max goes up the steps to meet her mother in the doorway not with fear or apprehension, but with a certain pride about her, one that might have even been compared to the very swagger that Billy would’ve carried himself with, were he the one to come home after his curfew to find Neil at the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some optimism! No more doom and gloom here fellas! Editing was a little rushed on this’n, so sorry if anything slipped past me! Hope y’all enjoy!!!


	6. No Space of Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max sets everything out in front of herself and thinks long and hard. What she’s about to do leaves no room for making mistakes, because she’s going to write a response to Maria.

Back inside the house for the night, Max avoids her nightly routine, going straight to her room to hopefully avoid any punishment until the morning comes. 

There’s something she really needs to do, so she waits and waits, watching the minutes tick by on her digital clock until the house quiets down and she can be sure Susan and Neil are asleep. 

She perches on the end of her bed and just listens for the TV to shut off in the living room, for her mother to pad up the steps toward her room in her fuzzy slippers, and for every light switch in the house to click off. Once she’s sat in complete silence, she presses her ear to the door so she can decide if she’s in the clear. 

There’s a writing desk in Billy’s room, along with the last of his furniture they haven’t put out to the curb yet, put there because, well, he wouldn’t be using the room anymore, and Susan thought the space should be utilized instead of just being a memoir to a dead boy, so it became an office of sorts. And that was where Max needed to be right now. 

Making as little noise as possible, she tiptoes from room to room, gently shutting each door behind herself, her heart stopping when the lock clicks into place. 

Before she takes another step into the room, she listens for a floorboard to creak, or a voice to shout at her to go back to sleep, but there’s nothing but the sound of thick snow gently hitting against the window pane. 

The lamp clicks on on the desk so she can see what she’s doing as she carefully fishes through the drawers of the bureau until she’s found a sheet of paper, the only one she could reach without making too much noise is printed with a border of holly branches, a red ballpoint pen, an envelope, and a stamp. 

Max sets it all out in front of herself and thinks long and hard. What she’s about to do leaves no room for making mistakes, because she’s going to write a response to Maria.

It takes a lot of workshopping, cutting out bits of information she would rather share in person and trying to make it as blunt as possible, but eventually she decides on this,

_“Dear Ms. Hargrove,_

_I’m not sure if Billy ever told you about me, but I’m his stepsister, Max._

_I got your card in the mail Christmas morning, and I’m sorry to tell you, but he didn’t get to read it._

_Your son Billy died on the 4th of July._

_Please, if you get this letter, come and see him. He’s in the cemetery on 101 Cedar Street, Hawkins, IN, plot 206 B under the ginkgo tree._

_I’m sorry,  
Maxine Mayfield” ___

__Max folds the paper as neatly as she can manage and seals it into the envelope, copying Maria’s address from the first letter onto the outside, and sticking the little stamp, a picture of a Christmas tree, to the corner._ _

__Putting everything back and pulling the chain on the lamp, it’s like she was never even there._ _

__

__But she must’ve gotten careless, must’ve been too caught up in the moment to remember to listen for footfalls because, when she opens the door again, she’s face to face with a disgruntled Susan._ _

__Arms behind her back, Max slowly slides the envelope into her pocket before her mother can see it. “What are you doing in here?”_ _

__“I-I was just, uh, thinking about Billy again.” She lies through her teeth, bringing her arms up to hold the door frame so Susan wouldn’t notice she had something hidden behind her back. “Wanted to be in here for a while, I guess.”_ _

__Susan frowns and rubs her eyes. “You know you’re not supposed to be up this late.”_ _

__“Yeah, I know, I just, couldn’t sleep.” She shrugs and offers a tired smile, hoping that’ll help her case._ _

__“Well next time, just try to stay in bed.” Susan’s tired, a little tipsy, and generally unhappy with Max, and it shows in her tone, but she’s too tired for reprimanding, so she makes an attempt at advice, saying, “It doesn’t do you any good to dwell on it.”_ _

__“Won’t happen again.” The answer must be acceptable because, shaking her head at her daughter, Susan finally retreats. For extra points, Max calls after her, “Goodnight, mom.”_ _

__Max stands in the doorway waiting for Susan to start climbing the steps again, then, once she’s absolutely positive her mother’s no longer paying her any mind, she returns to her own bedroom._ _

__

__The envelope finds itself in a hiding place under her mattress until she can mail it in the morning, just in case of snooping parents, and for the first time in a long while, Max gets a good night's sleep, the events of that day easing her off to dream._ _

__It’s the feeling of hope, of having found a friend and having done the right thing that sends her off into a restful sleep like she hasn’t had in forever, her guilt no longer plaguing her in reality or in dreamland, and her grief soothed._ _

__

__By sunrise the next day, she’s already up on her feet, dressed and ready to go before her parents are even awake._ _

__She leaves a note taped to the refrigerator door explaining her absence, lying about going to help Mrs. Byers with something she had mentioned at last night’s party, and hurries out the door, letter in her pocket, before anyone can stop her._ _

__But, as the hinges on the front door squeak, she steps out onto the front porch, hearing Neil’s gruff voice behind her before she can close it. “Where’re you going?”_ _

__“Mrs Byers. She, um, w-wanted me to come over and help El with uh, packing.” It sounded great on paper, but out loud it sounds exactly like a lie if she’s ever heard one. Neil doesn’t look upset though, so she decides to keep going. “They leave for Chicago soon.”_ _

__Neil nods, a look of complete disinterest on his face, and says “Tell her she can keep you if she wants to keep having you over there all the damn time.”_ _

__Then he turns away grumbling, and slams and locks the door in his step-daughters face._ _

__

__Her first winter around snow and ice, something that never lasted long enough back in Cali to be a problem, she’d learned the hard way that her board didn’t work so well on the salt covered sidewalks, so she has to get to the post office without wheels._ _

__She realizes though, that the walking route, unless she wanted to add an extra half hour or so to the trip, meant going right past the Sinclair’s house. Halfway down the sidewalk, when she sees Lucas' little sister outside, she knows that, after the luck she’s been having, she’s not getting off easy._ _

__Erica is all bundled up in layers of coats and sweatpants, sitting in a pile of snow in the front yard, and rolling out a collection of very tightly packed snowballs when she looks up and meets Max’s eyes. Turning her head back towards the window, Erica shouts to her brother, “Hey nerd, your girlfriend is here!”_ _

__Before Max can even correct her or try to explain to her that she was just passing through the neighborhood and it was no big deal, the front door is being yanked open, and Lucas comes skidding down the sidewalk towards her._ _

__He’s out of breath when he gets to her on the sidewalk, having run from somewhere in his house, and his voice is laden with concern. “Max! Where were you?”_ _

__“I was just busy. My parents said I couldn’t come.” She explains._ _

__“We assumed the worst when you and Steve didn’t show.” He's bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Why weren’t you on the line all night?”_ _

__Max shrugs, “Like I said, busy.”_ _

__He eyes her suspiciously, obviously trying to find some secret meaning to her words. “Are you okay?”_ _

__“Yeah, they just took me out for Christmas dinner.” She appreciates the concern, she really does, but she gives him a look anyhow. “You know not everything has to be the end of the world, right?”_ _

__“Yeah, right, ‘course.” He agrees, still sounding unsure, then doubles back on it. “You’re positive you’re alright?”_ _

__Giggling at how excessive he is, Max rolls her eyes, though not really out of annoyance, and affirms, “Yes, Lucas.”_ _

__“Okay.” There’s still more he wants to ask about yesterday, she can tell, but he gives it up, choosing instead to ask, “Where are you headed, then?”_ _

__“The post office. I have a thank you card for my grandma I'm supposed to send.” She lies again, but it doesn’t feel the same as when she lied to Neil and Susan or Aunt Nicole, where she was trying to hide how she felt, trying to be someone she wasn’t. This is more like she’s just trying to protect her personal life, and she thinks that’s fair enough._ _

__Lucas flashes her his most charming smile. “Mind if I join you?”_ _

__There’s no way she’s going to actually turn down the offer, but she pretends, turning her nose up and saying, “I don’t know. Don’t think I really want you slowing me down.”_ _

__“You just don’t want all of this,” Lucas motions to himself with a goofy grin, “to make you look bad.”_ _

__She puts a mock sympathetic hand on his shoulder, and says, “Keep telling yourself that, dweeb.” but there’s a wide smile on her face as she says it, even after Erica tells them to get a room and throws a handful of her snowballs at them._ _

__

__The rest of the walk into town is only a few minutes from that point if they take the shortcut behind the neighborhood, so Max isn’t all that worried about Lucas tagging along._ _

__Mostly though, it’s because, unless he miraculously overcame his hangover and decided to search the treeline with a pair of binoculars, there was pretty much no way Neil was going to see them together, and they were out early enough that any of the nib-nose neighbors who might’ve snitched on them weren’t even awake yet._ _

__Besides, even if Neil was one hundred percent guaranteed to catch her, she feels in a good enough mood that she doesn’t know that she’d care._ _

__

__

__

__

__Outside of the post office, as she opens the mail slot and lets the letter fall into the collection box, she can tell Lucas catches a glimpse of the name on the envelope just by the sudden frown on his face, the worry in his eyes as he looks over to again her._ _

__

__But Max, she isn’t bothered by it. She’ll tell him later what’s going on with her and Maria, once the whole thing is over. She thinks she owes it to herself to be a little more abrasive, to not just let everyone in on every last detail of her life so they can make her decisions for her._ _

__

__So she doesn’t bring it up, just smiles at him and takes his hand, and lets him walk her back home._ _

__

__

__

__After that morning she checks the mailbox constantly to make sure nobody else would find any letters from Maria before she did. Lord only knows what Neil would do if he found out she’d been in contact with his ex-wife._ _

__

__Day one, all she finds is an issue of the beauty magazine Susan has a subscribed to, a notice for a late water bill, and a day old Christmas card from Uncle Don down in Texas._ _

__

__The next day is more disappointing, nothing inside the mailbox but spam and a grocery store catalog._ _

__

__There’s no mail service on Sundays, so she spends the whole of the third day fretting, wondering if her letter her made it, and if she should try to send another._ _

__

__On the fourth day, there’s finally a letter in the mailbox addressed to Maxine Mayfield. Her heart stutters as she slides the stark white envelope out and gently tears it open._ _

__

__It simply reads,_ _

__

_“To Billy’s sister, I’m on my way.”_

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek! Sorry this is so late fellas! School started back up again today and I didn’t manage my time very well, so I fell super behind schedule! I’ll also admit that this is sort of a filler chapter, but tomorrow’s is good enough to make up for it I think! But here it is, hopefully not too rushed!


	7. January 1st, 1986: Penitence and Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would seem anyways, that these days, most things Max did were for Billy.

The first morning of the New Year, Max is spending her day in the cemetery.

She doesn’t really know what she believes about death, doesn’t have a clue where in the universe her brother might be now, be it of divinity or the supernatural, or maybe nowhere at all. All she knows is that she thinks the graveyard is creepy.

Right now, she’s sat cross-legged on the plot where her brother is buried, a space which is by now mostly grown over, her back against his headstone, wearing his jacket and using his Walkman.

There’s melting snow on the ground, the splotchy patches of ice soaking through her jeans and sending a nasty chill through her bones.

Her fingertips are numb, her nose and her cheeks are bright red from the whipping wind, her teeth chatter and her body shakes.

She hates the weather here, the dreariness and the bitter cold she never had to deal with back home, but she’s getting better at appreciating it for what it is.

Hawkins was supposed to be a new start, a way for her to sort of step away from how things used to be, when she still trusted her step-dad and when her and her brother fought all the time, so she could grow as a person.

She never expected it to be a permanent stop. Before Susan remarried, her and her mother used to move from city to city constantly, and she thought this would be like that in a way, where they’d move right on to the next place once they were done in the dinky little town.

But then they lost Billy, had to bury him in middle-of-nowhere Indiana, thousands of miles away from his home where he belonged, and Hawkins became a symbol of everything Max hated.

From optimism for where they could go from here, to the depressing reminder of confinement, of not being in control of her own life, her circumstances had done a complete 180.

She thinks that, for the most part, she’s getting better though. For one thing, it’s a pretty good sign that she’s not crying from just being here in the gloomy graveyard, but she’s still got a long ways to go.

Not that the hurt from her brothers death is ever going away, that’s a lifetime deal, but she’s at a place where she’s beginning to realize that the world is bigger than what she's lost.

Because, while Susan might not have been coming from the right place when she told her daughter that she needed to appreciate what she did have, Max thinks she can get behind it.

So what if her friends couldn’t feel her pain exactly, they were willing to help, and their help was exactly what she needed. That alone meant the world to her, no matter how pushy they could be, or how unhelpful their advice was.

And why did Hawkins have to lose its significance just because of the bad things that happened there? What was keeping her from remaining optimistic in the face of her suffering?

There was no good reason at all for why she couldn’t still be happy surrounded by her friends, or look forward to her future just because her brother couldn’t. If anything, she should do all of those things _for_ him.

He never did much like anyone making a fuss over him, so Max likes to think that’s what Billy would’ve wanted her to believe too. 

That’s why she’s out there now, mostly unprotected from weather cold enough to freeze her Winnebago, because she had made a promise to herself that she was going to be better at appreciating life for what it was, and that’s exactly what she would do.

In the moment, that meant becoming a human popsicle in the cemetery.

Any day now Maria Hargrove would be arriving in Hawkins to visit Billy, and Max wanted to be there when she did.

There was no telling exactly when she’d actually get in town, given the day and a half drive from Modesto to Hawkins, so for the past few days, Max had been camping out in the cemetery during the day as she awaited her arrival.

She’s starting to get bored waiting. Thrice she’s listened through the one mixtape of her brother’s that was still in the Walkman when she found it, and she’s considering just going home for the day.

Breaking curfew too many times meant the creation of new a rule that she be home before dark anyways, and considering she’s probably minutes away from becoming hypothermic, she decides she’s going to start heading back now.

As she stands and tries to brush off some of the ice clinging to her pants, though, she notices a woman a little ways away walking on the path, nervously checking every name on every headstone.

There’s not a glimmer of doubt in Max’s mind that this woman is Maria Hargrove.

The resemblance between mother and son is unmistakable, from the way their curls, dirty blonde and loose, laid flat in the winter, the curve of their button noses and the spatter of freckles across it, the deep blue of their eyes. Just seeing her and how much she looked like Billy, Max feels a twinge of sadness in her heart.

It’s when those eyes, in all of their dark intensity, meet hers that Max offers up a sympathetic smile, and slips her headphones off of her ears.

Maria’s gaze meets hers, and her face goes pale as she stops dead in her tracks. There’s a moment where it looks like she might bail, but she takes a deep breath, and steps forward.

“Are you Billy’s step-sister?”

“Yes ma'am”

Nervously, Maria goes for the formalities, deliberately standing so she can keep the headstone behind Max out of her line of sight. 

Wrapping her arms around herself against the cold, or maybe for comfort, the nervous woman says “Thank you for reaching out, dear.”

Max shrugs her shoulders, keeping her freezing hands deep in her pockets. It’s an awful nonchalant gesture for how overwhelmed she’s feeling in the presence of Billy’s mom. “Thought you needed to know.”

Neither of them knows what to do for a moment, Maria still clearly not ready to actually address the reason she’s here, so Max tries to break the ice again.

“I have a picture here. You can have it.” She thought it would be a nice thing to do, bringing Maria a picture of Billy, since she probably hadn’t seen any of him that weren’t almost a decade old.

She chose one of the defects from last summer when they were trying to get his headshot for the lifeguard board. It’s a little blurry and washed out from the sun, but it’s one of the last few pictures ever to be taken of him, and the most _Billy_ picture she had of him by far.

Probably because he’d been in his element, far away from the fake smiles and the even faker family bonding that most pictures of him included, just goofing off with his sister in the backyard and trying to get a good shot, it was definitely one of her favorites.

Taking the little Polaroid from Max’s hand, Maria gasps softly as she studies her estranged son's face. Tears bubble up in her throat as she remarks, mostly to herself, “My handsome boy…”

With what looked to be a tremendous effort, Maria looked up and took another few steps forward, now at the foot of her son's grave.

There’s a quiver in her voice as she asks Max softly, “Could you tell me what happened?”

“There was a fire at the mall. He tried to help some people out but the ceiling, it collapsed because it was glass and, he-he didn’t make it.” It’s a practiced story, she wonders if she’s a little too dull in her delivery, because it’s not really the whole truth.

The impaled by falling debris story just happened to be government approved, and tended to work a lot better than telling people he’d been killed by an inter dimensional monster from a parallel universe.

“My baby.” Her thumb caresses absentmindedly over the glossy photo. “Went out a hero.”

She smiles for nobody but herself. “He was always like that. Even when he was just a little thing, he thought he could protect me from Neil.”

“I- Neil, did he ever…?” Max can tell what she’s implying, if he ever abused Billy like he had his mother, and, not knowing how to be any less blunt about it, Max simply tells her, “Yeah. A lot, actually.” 

With a shaky hand, Maria covers her mouth in something like shock, disappointment, regret. There’s a tightness in her voice when she speaks again, an unreadable mix between anger and heartbreak, “He swore to me he wouldn’t ever lay a hand on our boy.”

“God, I don’t know why I believed him.” Pushing her hair back, a nervous tick Max had seen her son do a thousand times as well, she barely manages to choke out, “He said he would change. I can’t-.”

She stews in that for a moment, teary eyes locked on the stone in front of her, and when she speaks again, her voice is full of something very different from the sadness she’d been letting through before. “I need to see him.”

There’s a dangerous look in her eye as she turns to look to Max, “Where can I find Neil Hargrove?” 

Maria drives her back home in her ‘74 Karmann Ghia, and, while Max appreciates being spared the long walk home in the cold, she’s got to admit she’s nervous.

There’s no telling how exactly Neil is going to react to finding out that Maria’s in town thanks to Max, and she’s equally unsure about what Maria is going to do seeing her abuser for the first time in eight years. It’s more than stressful.

The truck is pulled up out front, confirming much to Max’s dismay that there’s no avoiding this confrontation. She just hopes things don’t get too far out of control.

Her parents must have been waiting up for her, because, as soon as they park, Neil is on the porch, arms crossed and looking stern, ready to chew out whichever of Max’s friends is behind the wheel this time, but that attitude is dropped completely when he sees Maria.

Mostly because, as soon as she steps out of the car, she _makes_ him drop it, marching right across their lawn just to smack him as hard as she could.

Max quickly slips past them, running up to the porch and allowing her own mother to place a concerned hand on her shoulder and steer her inside away from the fighting. She continues watching from the living room window.

“How could you?” Even from inside, Max can hear her shrieking voice clearly. “I am his mother!”

Neil, a man typically known for the disturbingly calm way he fought, actually shows his anger, flushing red as a beet and telling her in a voice that’s shaking with hatred. “You lost your right to that boy the moment you walked out the door.”

“You know that’s not fair! You left me with no choice!” She puts both hands on his chest and shoves him hard, tears on her cheeks. “You lied to me!”

“I parented him as I saw fit!” He raises his voice, and Max swears see can physically see the restraint it’s taking him not to hit Maria back. She’s glad they hadn’t brought this inside.

“What right do you have to question me, when you,” he points a finger into her face, “ _you_ left _us_ behind.” he says, turning it around on himself, “I was there for that boy, while you were what, trying to live out your fantasy? Run away so you could show me how independent you were?”

Maria screams back at him, “It doesn’t matter what you think of me! I still deserved to know that my baby was dead!”

  
Just watching the two of them go at it really explains a lot about Billy. 

The temper, the terrible coping mechanisms, the anger issues, all of it can be boiled down to the display currently happening in her front yard. 

Max finds herself wishing he had more time to work on it, the behavior that was so deeply ingrained in him, but seeing firsthand the way his parents conducted themselves, she felt proud of him that he could even do as much as he had before his life was cut short. 

Though it only makes the sting of his last words, a broken apology past the blood bubbling up in his throat, all the worse, knowing that he’d been trying so hard to be different, but all she could do for him now was make sure she didn’t veer down the same path. To try to use all that her friends had taught her to keep from following in his footsteps, and repeating his same mistakes.

__

Billy’s parents, however, seem to have shut out any thoughts like that, letting their hostility and their aggression out right in the front yard, no doubt by now drawing a crowd of nose neighbors peeking through their blinds.

Maria slaps Neil again, for what exactly Max didn’t quite catch that time, and storms back to her car.

Neil follows her, standing at her drivers side door and continuing his tirade of profanities even as Maria’s drives away.

Watching Neil fuming in the street now that Maria is gone, Max thinks it’d be in her best interest to be as far away from the aftershock of the fight as possible.

She cautiously hides out in her room, listening to Neil stomping his way back into the house, to him slamming doors and saying nasty things to Susan until that’s all replaced with the sound of keys being dug out of a pocket, and the truck roaring to life out front.

Sometimes Neil would do that, just up and leave to go out drinking at the bar if he didn’t want to face something that made him particularly angry. Max’d take that any day over a beating.

__

The whole thing still leaves Max shaken to her core, so, using what she’s been trying to teach herself since deciding she didn’t have to do everything on her own, she decides she’s going to reach out.

It takes her forever to finally turn the dial on her walkie, and even longer to actually say anything into it. “Guys?”

There are no initial responses, so she tries again. “Anybody read me?”

The first to respond is Lucas with a “Loud and clear, MadMax.” and the rest follow suit with various confirmations of their own.

Eleven asks her, “Everything is alright?”

“Yeah, totally, I just,“ She sighs, trying to find the right words. Opening up was definitely something she needed more practice with. “Billy’s mom came into town today and it made my step dad really mad and-“ 

“Hold the phone.” It’s Steve interrupting her despite having been expressly told by Dustin that he was only allowed to snoop if he never bothered them. “ You’re telling me that ___the___ Maria Hargrove is here? In Hawkins?”

“Yeah, I- she’ll be in town for the next few days,” Max says, a little thrown off guard, “but that’s not my point, I was saying that-“

“This is major. I mean, where is she? What’s she doing here?” Steve’s talking fast, his tone sounding like a cross between frantic and pissed off. “I need some more to work with here, Max.”

“Well she’s here for Billy, obviously, and I think she mentioned the Motel 6.” Max explains quickly, trying to get back to the point at hand, “But really I-“

“How long is she here for?”

“Steve!” At least three of the kids yell at him at once, not only for breaking literally the only rule he was given when they let him have a walkie, but also for cutting Max off.

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll butt out.” He says, seemingly chastened, but then he tries to add, “First can you tell me if-“

“Goodbye, Steve.” Dustin cuts in before the older boy can add a condition.

They wait until they’re sure he’s done before Will asks, “What was his problem?” 

Now, Max knows why it concerns Steve, but she keeps her mouth shut. She’d just sit back and let the rest of the kids come up with whatever explanation they saw fit, and maybe talk to Steve about Maria later.

Mike snickers into his end, “Maybe he likes older women?” 

Lucas scoffs, “That’s gross, man.” 

After that, the conversation doesn’t linger for too long on Max’s problems beyond them making sure she’s okay and moving along to their usual topics of discussion, but just that little bit of concern is enough for her. Her friends were by no means professional therapists, but, thinking over the newest gossip and campaign ideas leaves her mind occupied with something other than dwelling on the negative, and that’s enough. 

One of the hardest things she’d been dealing, was fear that if she allowed herself to be happy, to focus or to think about anything other than her sadness over her brother, she was going to forget him. But spending the night talking with her friends about games and teenager drama, she can’t help but feel that it’s just overall better to focus on the good things in life rather than to keep reopening the wound by dwelling on everything miserable.

____ _ _

Two days, a reportedly passive aggressive introduction to Steve Harrington, and many hours spent at her son's graveside later, Maria calls from her room at the Motel 6 to tell Max she’s leaving for California.

She says she feels she’s overstayed her welcome, and that she’s had enough time to made her peace. There’s nothing left for her in Hawkins, so it’s time to go back home.

Max asks her, “Will you be back soon?”

The question basically answers itself; if Maria could leave her behind ten year old when he was begging her to stay, it only made sense that she could leave him behind with ease, now that he’s eighteen and six feet under. The only reason Max really feels the need to ask is in case it might change her mind.

“If I can make it.” It’s an ambiguous enough answer that she knows it means no, but she supposes she can live with that. Just knowing that she got Maria to come back to Billy at all is what mattered.

What a shame though, that it took her son dying young, killed at the cusp of his adulthood, to bring her back around. What a shame that she couldn’t face the consequences of her actions before it was too late.

But it was never really about Maria anyways, Max couldn’t have cared less if she got her closure, or made her peace, as she had put it. It was all for Billy.

It would seem anyways, that these days, most things Max did were.

Because no matter where it was that his soul had ended up, she knows she can do better, can keep growing knowing that she did right by him, and continues to do so every day. 

It is for this reason, in honor of her big brother Billy, as well as for her own sake, that Max made it her goal to do her best to honour Christmas in her heart, and try to keep it all the year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we are officially done!!! This ended up taking way longer than it was supposed to, sooo sorry for the wait! A million thank yous to everyone who read this little idea I had, I’m so glad so many of you liked it!! Bonus points to anyone who noticed that this was kinda my really unfaithful spin on A Christmas Carol! As in, Max learns a lot of lessons about her grief and how to be happy again through the other characters, Maria being like the past (the one who shows her that the past is truly past and she needs to try to move on without forgetting her brother), Lucas and the rest of the party being the present (the ones trying to ground her/show her that she has to live in the moment), and Steve being the future (a new friendship/support system that has her looking forward instead of dwelling on the loss.) Again, thanks bunches and bunches to everyone, your support has truly meant the world to me!! See you soon, -EJ!!!!!


End file.
